National security is the raison d’être of the state, i.e. the reason for its existence. The primary obligation of the state used to be to protect its people from military attack, coercion, internal subversion etc. and this developed to include protecting its essential political, economic and social values. (https:// www.cfc.forces.gc.ca/ 221/19/276-eng.html). In his ‘The West on Trial’(TWOT) Cheddi Jagan explained in some detail that he was not a threat to Western interests, but writing on the eve of Guyana’s independence, John Chamberlain gave us a brief but sufficiently comprehensive view of how the West assessed developments in Guyana.